Ada County Housing Market, Week of July 20, 2026

Ada County, Idaho Market Pulse

Week of July 20 · from Luke Gilbert's team

This week's lean

Sellers held the cards this week.

Signed prices firmed and buyers moved quickly. Demand did the talking this week.

What moved · resale · vs last week

The full board · vs last week

Signed = went under contract. Days = median time on market for listings, or median time to contract for signed. Exact figures in the story below.

Price cuts keep coming, but the biggest move this week is not just about asking prices. It is about how sellers and buyers are slowly meeting in the middle, even as the cost of borrowing hits its highest mark of the year. Sellers are shaving off thousands, but buyers are not exactly stampeding in. If anything, the market is thinning out on both sides. There are fewer homes listed, and even fewer new contracts being written, especially on the new construction side.

Inventory is shrinking. That is the third week in a row for resale listings, with both the number of homes for sale and their asking prices sliding down. But despite fewer choices, buyers are not rushing. Homes are still sitting for about a month before getting an accepted offer. If you are a seller, the message is getting clearer: hanging onto last summer’s price is not getting the job done.

Existing homes

Resale homes are seeing both less competition and softer prices. The median price for an active listing slid to $633,430, down $7,310 from last week. That is another meaningful cut, and it is landing right alongside a drop in the number of active listings, down by 29 to 928. The time it takes to find a buyer is holding steady at 33 days. On the pending side, buyers are agreeing to pay a median price of $578,670, which is actually up $3,380 from last week. That is the first uptick in a while, but with only a handful more homes under contract, I would not call it a trend yet. Most sellers who are going pending are those who adjust quickly to where buyers are actually willing to write a check.

New construction

Builders are getting squeezed from both sides. The median asking price on a brand new home fell again, now at $665,853, down $6,002. There are 401 new builds on the market, four fewer than last week, but that is still a lot of supply for late July. The typical new build is sitting for 65 days before an offer comes in, barely changed from last week. Pending new construction is a mixed bag: prices on homes going under contract jumped to $634,840, up $5,440, but the number of new builds finding buyers slipped to 160. And those deals are taking longer to negotiate...median days on market for pending new builds rose by nearly a week, now at 62 days. My read is buyers are picking over the new build inventory, pushing for incentives or waiting until something pencils out.

The bigger picture

The cost to borrow is the single biggest headwind right now. The 30-year fixed mortgage averaged 6.58% as of July 23, and that is the highest rate we have seen this year. For anyone looking at a home in the $600,000 range, every tick up in rates means hundreds more per month on the mortgage. Buyers who locked in earlier this summer have a real advantage. For everyone else, the Fed’s next move is the wild card. If rates keep climbing, sellers in places like Eagle and Meridian may need to rethink their price floors, and buyers are likely to keep waiting for the numbers to make sense.

Sellers are adjusting, but the real test is coming as summer winds down. It is too early to say if this is the start of a longer slide or just a mid-summer cooling. For now, the market is rewarding patience, but I am not sure how long that patience pays off on either side.